fatal

proper diets, techniques, and weights are unknown
to the races populating this gaming world. For instance,
it was common to think that more exercise
always yielded more benefit, which of course would
fail to give the muscles time to repair. Therefore,
any character desiring to increase their Physical Fitness
or Strength through Persistent Exercise must
roll a Common Sense check with a TH of 18 to
exercise successfully. Otherwise, the adopted
method utterly fails to cause noticeable results.
If successful, and assuming that exercise is
not neglected periodically, then the character must
make checks at certain time intervals to determine
improvement. These checks are made without modifiers
by rolling 3d10. If the roll exceeds the TH,
then the following roll represents the number of
sub-ability points gained:
Time
Interval
Threshold
Gains
3 months
7 (1d20)%
6 months
11
(1d20)%
1 year
13
(1d12)%
2 years
18
(1d10)%
4 years
21
(1d8)%
8 years
24
(1d6)%
16
years
25
(1d4)%
If a character begins exercising, but does not
continue to exercise regularly, then gains will be substantially
less, if any at all. The Aedile may assign
penalties to sub-ability points gained due to inconsistency
or neglect. Further, if a character exercises
for some time and then stops exercising altogether,
then they may lose sub-ability points. If they have
exercised consistently for 1 year or less and then
stop exercising altogether, then they lose (1d100)%
of their gains from the last year of exercise. The
losses will be distributed proportionally over (20 +
1d100) days. If they have exercised for 2 or more
years, then they will lose (|1d100 - 3d20|%) of their
gains. Note that the previous roll utilizes absolute
values, which means that even if the resultant number
is a negative number, the sign is changed to positive.
Finally, the losses will be distributed proportionally
over (20 + 2d100) days. In either case, if
exercise is abandoned, in addition to losing previous
gains, then the character is 90% likely to gain
(3d6)% of their weight in body fat. Roll 1d100 to
determine where the fat accumulates:
Roll
Result
01-20
Waist
21-40
Buttocks
41-60
Buttocks and thighs
61-80
Buttocks and waist
81-100
Evenly distributed
Once this occurs, future fat gains will occur
in the same location. Each character is different.
Regarding the sub-abilities of Intelligence,
they may increase or decrease according to how often
a character mentally subjects themselves to Persistent
Exercise.
For every decade that a character challenges
themselves in 1 of the sub-abilities of Intelligence,
there is a 50% chance that they may gain 1d4 points
in the appropriate sub-ability. For a character to
challenge themselves in Language, they must continually
learn a new language, or at least study the
etymology, grammar, or vocabulary of their current
language. The other sub-abilities require similar new
challenges.
Likewise, for every decade that a character
fails to challenge themselves in 1 of the sub-abilities
of Intelligence, there is a 50% chance that they lose
1d4 points in the appropriate sub-ability.
Alternative Method: Rolling Abilities
The method described in the beginning of
the chapter for determining abilities should be the
standard method for several reasons. First, the average
sub-ability score rolled should be 100, which
is the norm of all human populations. Additional
modifiers, such as for gender and race, are applied
in the following chapter. This method [(10d100 /
5) - 1] more accurately reflects nature, and therefore,
adds a sense of realism to the game. Exceptionally
high and low ability scores still occur with
this method, though there is an appropriate measure
of central tendency, such that the mean, median,
and mode are 100.
Due to this method, however, the resultant
sub-ability scores are less likely to allow the character
to meet the prerequisites of magic-using occupations,
for instance, than warriors. Indeed, some
players become greatly disheartened when they observe
that some occupations are more rare than oth-
Chapter 3: Abilities
99